My beautiful wonderful children, you are traveling to China with your Mom. Its been a whirlwind over the past few days doing some last minute travel, celebrating Vivia’s 2nd birthday, seeing the doctor, getting ready for your trip.  We woke up a 2 am to start getting ready and get you to the airport. I really love how much my child have grown and matured and become beautiful little people, not babies, but a son and daughter.

I miss you so much already. You two and your Mom mean the world to me. A thousand mountains of gold and riches would mean nothing without you in my life. I’ve dedicated my life to raising my children and having a happy family. I want to be a good husband and a good father.

You two are so so adorable. Victor, you just love comparing things nowadays. First you enjoyed size comparison of things in the universe. Then it was tree comparison, speed comparison, then tower comparison. You have memorized dozens of towers built and tower to-be-built and know the heights, cities were there are and more.

You love Garfield, Ice Age, Dory, and recently you enjoyed watching Pacific Rim 2 with me. You are reading comic books recently like Calvin and Hobbes and Star Wars Comic adaptation.

Vivia, you love to dance and sing. When I dance, you dance with me, when I sing you will sing too. You will even sing songs all by yourself and start wiggle dancing when a song you like comes on. You are also speaking very well. You put words together like “Where Mommy”, “Right here”,  and “I love you”. You can sing the alphabet song and can say your numbers up to ten. You are sooooo tall, over 100% for your age. You tower over kids your age. I think you were measured to be 37 inches today.

I am missing you both while you are on your trip. The house is cold and lonely without all of you. All the energy you bring makes this house completely different when you are here.

Every few seconds

It’s really cool how much you enjoy things scientific. Of course you enjoy Despicable Me and Ice Age like other kids, you love Size Comparisons. Then you enjoyed Boat Comparison, Tree Comparison, Time Comparison, Speed Comparison, etc etc. I said with all this knowledge of space and science, what do you want to ? You said “Be an astronomer!” You love to draw pictures and compare the sizes of different objects like planets, stars, black holes, galaxies, and other cosmic objects.

You said to make a chemical mixture you needed a U spoon of something. I asked what’s that? You said it’s bigger than a T Spoon!

You helped me find the car at Target because I picked the wrong one. You noticed the hub caps were wrong, and you were right!

You asked me, why are all the prices .99 something? You’ve been asking great questions!

So you, me and Grandpa are watching Guardians of the Galaxy v2 on the computer. In one scene Star Lord gets upset and says, “Son of a bitch!” . I’m taken aback because I’m watching with you. You start laughing hysterically and say “Son of a fish! Why would he call him son of a fish, haha!”

Grandpa and I looked at each other and said “whew, that was close”

I sometimes think I am doing something wrong. Am I a bad father? I see you’re upset, maybe I am not dealing with it well, maybe I am over doing things, I don’t know.

Respect, respect is earned I guess. I may have lost your respect. You sometimes can say or do mean things to us. Do I play around to much, do I need to be tougher, show more of my good points, something else? What do I do right, what do I do wrong? How can I be a better parent? Maybe I need to learn more about how to be a better parent.

I know yelling is wrong, but I still do it. Maybe it’s a case of bad habits. I tell you to change, but struggle to change my self. How do I change myself? Write a list on the board? Make rules in the house…

I believe in God, when I need help I do ask God for help. But I also must find a way to…

Maybe just stop worrying and be happy…

The other day Victor said a new word “Unbrainable”! Which means unimaginable or incomprehensible. I love this word and I have been saying it myself.

Today, we went to the park and played baseball! We had so much fun! I was throwing pitches like the Double Hot Potato and Atom Smasher with Blueberry Banana Pancakes, and you would smash the them! You were hitting home runs and crushing the ball.

Hi Victor! Congratulations! You have graduated to Jellyfish! When you started swim school you fought and kicked and screamed when we put you in the water, but your attitude and approach have completely changed. Now you can float on your back, blow bubbles under water, dive for rings under the water. The lead instructor said you are very comfort under the water. You even got three rings on the bottom of the pool, which is very rare for a 4 year old.

On top of that, you graduated to the next level, Jellyfish. We keep all your ribbons and put them on the wall. 

More than anything I’m happy you can see your effort and practice have paid off. That shows success doesn’t come overnight, but it is possible with effort.

Hi Victor, 

I’ve said it a thousand times, but it’s so true, you are my pride and joy. You may find it hard to believe, but every moment with you is a treasure. Sure we don’t always agree or “battle”, but I love you and want to be with you. Since your sister was born the time we have together is not as much as I want, and I know you need and want Daddy’s attention, but I believe you having a sister will be wonderful for you as you as you grow up and you will help and protect her as well. You’ve already protected her by warning mommy and daddy when sister put something in her mouth she shouldn’t have. And I can see you both are getting along better with time. 

Now we are in China, it’s been good experience for you so far. You are speaking Chinese and learning how it feels to be in China, the food, people, culture. It’s important for you to spend time with the Chinese family, Waigong, Laolao, Jiujiu, and Gege. These people are your family, they love you and care about you, they will help you. 

It’s hard for me to let you go for a few weeks, as I have to go back to America, but I know it’s good for you to have this experience and it’s important for your Mommy to be with her Mommy and Daddy as well. This is the first time they will have ever seen your sister as well. 
I’m excited for you to go to Chinese school for a little while. This will help you to be bilingual. You may hate it and not care to be bilingual now, but it will be a huge advantage and benefit for you in the future. 
I suppose you can imagine mommy and daddy are thinking about your future, we want you to do what makes you happy in the future, at the same time there are things we want you to learn and experience so you know who you are and where you come from, to have a strong sense of love and family, to learn to respect and understand our differences, and put you in a good position for a bright future. 
When you come home I plan for us to do a lot of swimming, reading, playing and activities together. 
Please take care of Vivia and be a good boy for Mommy. Enjoy your stay with Waigong, Laolao, Jiujiu, and Gege. 
Lots of love to you and see you in about three weeks.
Daddy 

You got upset at the Chinese school. All the teachers tried to be nice, but I think you felt a lot of pressure. You were scared. 
I said Victor, all the people like you. You said why? Why do they like me. How could I explain that as a half-Chinese half-foreigner that Chinese people were so interested in you? They think you are beautiful, smart, and special. I realized that you didn’t understand or appreciate why people wanted to give you attention, see you, talk to you, put you on a kind of pedestal. You just wanted to be a kid like the other kids and enjoy the class. I needed to see things from your perspective. I learned a lesson. 

I want more than anything in the world to be able to spend all my time with you. I pains me greatly to have to go to work or do busy work or fixing house issues or anything that takes away time I could have with you.

I can see you are growing up, you are trying so hard to learn and play and grow up. I want to kick myself whenever I yell or not treat you as well I should. 

You have so much energy!!! You can go nearly full power all day it seems. I like to call you The Hurricane or Rolling Thunder to describe the energy you come with. 

One of the things I most excited and proud of is how much you can read now. You are able to read books, I know you aren’t just memorizing the books because you can read books without me ever reading them to you once. I think that having read to you almost daily since you were born has been something I did right.

You sister hasn’t gotten the attention from me I would love to give her. It’s much more challenging given attention to two than one. You both need and deserve all the attention I can give, it’s not easy to always bring it.

Some things we’ve done since I last posted:

Go to Fountain Hill Park aka Rainbow Park. You’ve read the entire book “The Lorax” to me. You had you 4th birthday, which I thought was a very special birthday, it seems you have made big steps in maturity. You put on underwear by yourself. You can play a lot by yourself too. 

One thing that I’m working on is trying to get you in preschool. I’ve got the money now, we are just waiting for an opening.

First of all, let me discuss the biggest change in our lives, you sister was born in April! That was a big event for us all. We had to go to the hospital, take care of mommy, bring your sister Vivia into this world.

The doctor and staff at the hospital were fantastic, I was worried about mommy, but she did great, and the delivery went as smooth as you could ask for. Except for me, I was as sick as a dog and couldn’t hold Vivia as to protect her health. Vivia was born at night, so the next day we were all sleeping in the morning when Vivia started making some sounds. You woke up and realized she was there. It was a bit of a shock for you but you quickly warmed up to her.

There have been some challenges for you, not getting as much attention as you used to. Sometimes you say, “Do you remember when it was just the three of us?”. But now that Vivia is a few months older and you’ve gotten to know her, and she smiles and looks at you, I think you are happy she is here now.

I see you like to play with her and sing to her. You like to give and share in the attention. I often think of the great relationship your mother and her brother have, as well as my aunt and uncles, and I hope you and your sister will have a wonderful relationship for a lifetime. I always wanted a sibling, and I think it will be a blessing for you both.

My son, you love to memorize things. During the last few months you have completely memorized the period table. The symbols, numbers and names. Its a feat of incredible proportions. Will you ever meet another child who memorized the period table by the age of 3 years 11 months? Names like praseodymium and dysprosium roll off your tongue like you’ve always known them. You had some trouble pulling your pants up after going pee pee, but have no problems helping Daddy remember Molybdenum is number 42.

It started with Astronomy. Everything has grown from there. You wanted to know every star, every planet, dwarf planet, comet, asteroid, galaxy, black hole, exoplanet’s name. We must have gone over many many books well above your expected comprehension level. And you wanted everything, if I tried to skip ahead, you’d flip the page back and say “Start from the beginning!”.

You had learned that stars were made of Hydrogen and Helium. I thought it natural you might want to learn more, so we picked up the elements book at the library. You absolutely just absorbed it like a sponge, soon you were going over every page. I bought a couple posters of the Periodic Table and an iPad app, and within about 2 months you know all of them. We are now making a video with you as the narrator.

I totally can see you becoming anything your heart desires. An astronomer, scientist, doctor, whatever. I love your power and passion to learn.